


Wild for to Hold

by Avia_Isadora



Category: The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27744289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora
Summary: Giulia Farnese is no fool.  But perhaps her lover makes her just a little bit foolish.
Relationships: Rodrigo Borgia | Pope Alexander VI/Giulia Farnese
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Wild for to Hold

**Author's Note:**

> Set in Season 1 between episodes 2 and 3.

There is written, her fair neck round about:

_Noli me tangere_ , for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

-Thomas Wyatt

He smells of incense and cedarwood, the former because he bathes in great clouds of it each day, and the latter because they keep his clothes in cedar chests. It is as well. Giulia cannot stand the rank smell of man-sweat. She tells herself it is because she is fastidious. His hands are smooth and fine; he fights with the pen, not the sword. He is mercurial. She cannot guess his moods in advance, indulgent, louche, sharp with witty barbs, keen as the blade he does not carry, or sometimes abstracted and just a bit unworldly. She comes upon him in prayer, which shocks her. She had assumed it was a pose, as it is for so many, but who does he pretend to alone in his room? Does he pretend for God? Does he think God will be fooled by a Borgia?

But surely it is Giulia who is the fool. She is a woman of the world, albeit one lacking in useful experience with a man like this. She knows the first rule: you are the huntress, your beauty and wit your golden snare. Men are prey, though dangerous. They can turn on the huntress in a heartbeat. Like boarhunting, it is deadly sport. You must never let your guard down.

At first she watches keenly to learn. If one would please, one must know what pleases. If one would avoid the sudden gore when the boar turns round in the net, one must never take one’s eyes off the boar. Surely that’s the only reason she watches his hands when he’s writing a note by candlelight, some urgent business in the dark hours while she supposedly sleeps in his tumbled bed. The phrases unroll, scratched on the page. What he writes does not please him. The candlelight shines on the white in his hair, the shades of expression across his face, like the shadows of clouds shifting on water. Giulia is watching, she tells herself, to understand better, not because she thinks him beautiful.

When he returns to bed, she turns sleepily into his arms, as though she had not been awake the entire time. She does not fear him. The boar will not turn, at least not this way. “Your feet are freezing,” she murmurs.

“Come let me warm them.” They’re ice against hers, but his chest is warm. His long shirt smells like frankincense.

“You smell good,” she says.

“I do bathe,” he says.

Giulia smiles against his skin. “Well.” It is dangerous to feel so safe. Nothing in this world is safe. Everything is a knife’s edge from deadly peril.

“Do you hunt, fair Giulia?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “But not in many years. Not since my marriage.” She cranes her neck to look up at him. “Do you?” It seems a bit incongruous.

“With the bow, not the boar spear. I have put swords away since I have sons to wield them for me.” He nuzzles at her hair. “I presume you use a bow?”

“Of course.” She is still trying to picture him with a sword and failing, though of course he was younger once. Was he something like Cesare, when he was a young cleric?

“I shall picture you as Diana then,” he says. “Or do you prefer Hippolyta?”

“Diana,” Giulia says definitively. “I should not like to ride bare-breasted into Jerusalem like Eleanor of Aquitaine.” 

“Perhaps Minerva then, with the gorgon on your breastplate.” His hands tangle in her hair, the long, weighted glory of it spread between his fingers.

“You would have me forever virgin?” 

He chuckles. “Not hardly. But Minerva does appreciate a clever hero.” 

And that is maybe something to learn. “Is that what you are?” 

“I am no kind of hero, Giulia Farnese.” His hands caress her scalp, bending her neck back into his grasp, as though she bared her throat for the kill. “I am a man of the cloth.”

“Of course.” It’s a bit hard to keep up witty repartee and classical allusion with his hands on her, so sensual and so unexpected. Why would the back of her head have such delicate sensation?

“If you like, we could one of these days,” he says.

“Could what?” She’s missed a beat in the dance, lost in pleasure, his thumbs pressing at the base of her skull.

“Hunt,” he says. “Is that not what we were talking about?” 

“Yes, of course. I would love to hunt.” Her voice sounds a little breathless even to her. 

“I believe you’re having trouble following this conversation.” He sounds amused, tilting her head so that he can kiss her thoroughly and deeply.

She is pretending, of course, when she leans into him, her hands slipping under his shirt, following the lines of his back, cleaving him to her. It is illusion when the hind flees and the hunter follows, hoping to catch what cannot be caught for reasons that make no sense to her, for what would one do with a hind if one had one? There are deer aplenty. There is no reason to tame one, or to gentle it before one slays it. And still she flees. And still he follows.

Teasing, drawing, pressure where she needs it. She shifts to give him room to mount her. “Not yet,” he murmurs, his face against her bared breast, just where the hunter would mark it. Not yet, of course. He has already had her once this night, and at his age there is time between. If he would fill that in pleasing her, it is a wonder and a joy. “There, my beauty. Turn thus.” 

She kneels legs spread, her face against her own clasped hands, while he works her, oiled hands sliding sleekly against engorged flesh. And there is a thing she never knew before – humble olive oil eases all and grants greater pleasure. Surely every peasant in Romagna knows that, but she did not. It slips and it does not burn against tender skin. Giulia bites down on her lower lip. 

“My lovely penitent,” he says. He sounds a little breathless himself. 

And it is taking too long. She is taking too long. The pressure, his fingers inside her aren’t quite enough. She is making him wait while she is mired in frustration, not quite able to let go.

“Put your clever hands on yourself,” he says in the same tone and it is easy to slide into the fantasy. She must. He chastises her for some too-real sin, working her like this to the point of frustration though she can feel the throb of pulse in her nether lips. Permission, yes. Permission to touch with one hand, her face hidden against the other by her shield of hair. 

“Wicked girl. What secrets you have,” he says, his fingers slipping in and out while she touches. And that is enough, his voice the match that sets it alight. She screams, bucking like a stricken doe, bearing down on his hand, on her own hand, a world without light or morning. For a moment the entire earth contracts.

And then she is lying against his shoulder, hair tangled around her face. Her pounding heart slows. Eyes closed, she tilts her head back, his lips brushing against hers. “You are passionate,” he says.

Her body contracts in one last spasm of pleasure. “I have always thought myself reserved,” Giulia says. 

“Cool on the outside and molten within.” He seems to be trying to get her hair out of his mouth. 

“I have never been thus before.” Dissembling is beyond her at this moment. 

“Then this is for me, and me alone.” 

For me and mine are not the same things, she thinks, one given and the other claimed. “Yes,” she says. “This is yours.” She can give too, this moment of triumph against enemies he cannot see. After all, he has given herself to her. 

When she kisses him to draw him down to her, ready at last from her eager pleasure, it is gratefulness, Giulia thinks. It is that she would thank him in the same coin he so generously poured in her lap. It is that she would make him welcome in her, as she would welcome him into the house that is his gift. Surely gratitude is not dangerous. Love is death, but surely what is between them cannot be so perilous. He will not love her. To love him would be folly. 

When at last he sleeps, the faint light through the mullioned windows precursor of dawn, she watches his face, her scent on him. It is a strange and awful peace, held to his breast in the midst of the storm. But perhaps for now it is enough.


End file.
